[2] A zettascale computer system could generate more single floating point data in one second than was stored by the total digital means on Earth in the first quarter of 2011.
[citation needed] Floating point operations per second (FLOPS) are one measure of computer performance.
FLOPS can be recorded in different measures of precision, however the standard measure (used by the TOP500 supercomputer list) uses 64 bit (double-precision floating-point format) operations per second using the High Performance LINPACK (HPLinpack) benchmark.
It is also forecasted that zettascale systems are expected to be decentralized—because such a model can be the shortest route to achieving zettascale performance, with millions of less powerful components linked and working together to form a collective hypercomputer that is more powerful than any single machine.
[6][clarification needed] China’s National University of Defense Technology propose the following metrics:[7] As Moore's law nears its natural limits, supercomputing will face serious physical problems in moving from exascale to zettascale systems, making the decade after 2020 a vital period to develop key high-performance computing techniques.